Conventionally, owners who keep various kinds of pets have troubles in more precisely understanding emotions of the breeding pets. They could communicate more smoothly and make friends with the pets with better understanding.
As shown in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2010-187631 (JP 2010-187631 A), a device that estimates an emotion of a small animal has been developed. In the technique disclosed in JP 2010-187631 A, the device includes an electrode, a foot of a small animal is placed on the electrode, and a weak current flows therethrough to stimulate the foot to obtain a biological potential. The device then computes and displays the degree of relaxation and the degree of excitement based on the obtained biological potential.
However, in the device disclosed in JP 2010-187631 A, since the foot of the small animal needs to be placed on the electrode, it is hard to obtain the biological potential in the natural state of the small animal to estimate the emotion of the small animal in everyday life, and thus the device fails to satisfy the user's needs.
It could therefore be helpful to provide an animal emotion estimation device and a sound collector for use in the animal emotion estimation device, allowing the user to recognize the emotion of the animal in general life.